A display interface may be disposed between an application processor (AP) and a display driver integrated circuit (DDIC) to transmit display data from the AP to the DDIC for further processing. When a display panel supports a higher display resolution, 2D/3D display with higher resolution can be realized. Hence, the display data transmitted over the display interface would have a larger data size/data rate, which increases the power consumption of the display interface inevitably. If the AP and the DDIC are both located at a portable device (e.g., a smartphone) powered by a battery device, the battery life is shortened due to the increased power consumption of the display interface.
Similarly, a camera interface may be disposed between a camera module and an image signal processor (ISP) to transmit multimedia data from the camera module to the ISP for further processing. The ISP may be part of an application processor. When a camera sensor with a higher resolution is employed in the camera module, the captured image data transmitted over the camera interface would have a larger data size/data rate, which increases the power consumption of the camera interface inevitably. If the camera module and the ISP are both located at a portable device (e.g., a smartphone) powered by a battery device, the battery life is shortened due to the increased power consumption of the camera interface.
Data compression may be employed to reduce the data size/data rate of picture data transmitted over a transmission interface such as the display interface or the camera interface. To enable parallel processing in an encoder side, a decoder side, or both, slice partitioning is proposed. However, it is possible that a picture height of a picture is not evenly divisible by a slice height and/or a slice width of the picture is not evenly divisible by a pixel group width. Pixel padding is therefore needed. However, the slice boundary condition may make the processing more complicated. Hence, there is a need for an innovative design which can simplify the pixel padding of a picture that is partitioned into equal-sized slices.